Buckingham Palace’s Institutional Racism Revealed in Damning Unearthed Documents

2021/06/04 Leave a comment

Of interest:

Less than three months ago, Meghan Markle and Prince Harry accused an unnamed member of the royal family of having asked a racist question about the likely color of any of their then-unborn children’s skin.

In response, Prince William told reporters, “We are very much not a racist family.”

However, British newspaper the Guardian today revealed that the monarchy has explicitly employed racist hiring practices and that it continues to claim a special exemption from British equality legislation.

The smoking gun is a 1968 letter from a civil servant—which the Guardian found in Britain’s national archives—saying that “it was not, in fact, the practice to appoint colored immigrants or foreigners” to “clerical and office posts” at Buckingham Palace, although such people were considered for lower status “ordinary domestic posts.”

If defenders of the monarchy planned to talk down the significance of this documentary evidence because it is more than 50 years old, the Guardian also reveals that the institution continues to this day to be exempt from equality legislation that other organizations in the United Kingdom are required to follow.

The Guardian found the 1968 letter as part of an ongoing investigation into a little-known legal and constitutional procedure known as “Queen’s Consent,” in which the British Parliament has to seek permission from the monarch in advance of debating any law which may affect her interest. Queen’s Consent is distinct from Royal Assent, the purely ceremonial process by which laws passed by Parliament are given a symbolic sign-off by a monarch.

Buckingham Palace has consistently sought to play down and head off the Guardian’s investigation into Queen’s Consent, and has previously said that the process is “a parliamentary process, with the role of sovereign purely formal. Consent is always granted by the monarch where requested by government.”

The Guardian has unearthed multiple examples that would appear to suggest the granting of Queen’s Consent is far from a formality, including an exemption for the queen on having her art collection searched for stolen or looted artworks.

The race and employment bombshell is likely to be the most damaging for the monarchy given the allegations of racism that were made by Meghan and Harry. Meghan said that “concerns” were raised with Harry about her potential kids’ skin color. (A spokesperson for Harry and Meghan declined to comment on today’s revelations.)

Among the documents unearthed by the Guardian is a 1968 note taken by a civil servant, which summarized the position of senior royal courtier, Lord Tryon, who held the title “keeper of the privy purse” as Britain’s government sought to introduce the country’s first workplace anti-discrimination legislation.

Tryon, the civil servant wrote, had told him that palace staff fell into one of three categories: “(a) senior posts, which were not filled by advertising or by any overt system of appointment and which would presumably be accepted as outside the scope of the bill; (b) clerical and other office posts, to which it was not, in fact, the practice to appoint colored immigrants or foreigners; and (c) ordinary domestic posts for which colored applicants were freely considered, but which would in any event be covered by the proposed general exemption for domestic employment.”

When the legislation was ultimately introduced in the 1970s, the Guardian says, government officials worked with the queen on the precise wording of the laws, in order to give the queen an exemption from them.

The Race Relations Board, which was then in charge of investigating complaints, and usually referred apparent breaches to be tried by British courts, was specifically directed to send any complaints made by employees of the queen to the home secretary instead.

The Guardian said that the queen “has remained personally exempted from those equality laws for more than four decades.” As a result of the exemption, the paper said, it is “impossible for women or people from ethnic minorities working for her household to complain to the courts if they believe they have been discriminated against.”

Buckingham Palace did not dispute this, the Guardian said, but the palace said it had “a separate process for hearing complaints related to discrimination” but did not specify what this process was.

Buckingham Palace did not respond to a request for comment from The Daily Beast.

Source: Buckingham Palace’s Institutional Racism Revealed in Damning Unearthed Documents

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USA: The Brewing Political Battle Over Critical Race Theory

2021/06/03 Leave a comment

Latest iteration of the “culture wars:”

Last month, Republican lawmakers decried critical race theory, an academic approach that examines how race and racism function in American institutions.

“Folks, we’re in a cultural warfare today,” Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., said at a news conference alongside six other members of the all-Republican House Freedom Caucus. “Critical race theory asserts that people with white skin are inherently racist, not because of their actions, words or what they actually believe in their heart — but by virtue of the color of their skin.”

Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., added: “Democrats want to teach our children to hate each other.”

Republicans, who are fighting the teaching of critical race theory in schools, contend it divides Americans. Democrats and their allies maintain that progress is unlikely without examining the root causes of disparity in the country. The issue is shaping up to be a major cultural battle ahead of next year’s midterm elections.

Academics, particularly legal scholars, have studied critical race theory for decades. But its main entry into the partisan fray came in 2020, when former President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning federal contractors from conducting certain racial sensitivity trainings. It was challenged in court, and President Biden rescinded the order the day he took office.

Since then, the issue has taken hold as a rallying cry among some Republican lawmakers who argue the approach unfairly forces students to consider race and racism.

“A stand-in for this larger anxiety”

Andrew Hartman, a history professor at Illinois State University, described the battle over critical race theory as typical of the culture wars, where “the issue itself is not always the thing driving the controversy.”

“I’m not really sure that the conservatives right now know what it is or know its history,” said Hartman, author of A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars.

He said critical race theory posits that racism is endemic to American society through history and that, consequently, Americans have to think about institutions like the justice system or schools through the perspective of race and racism.

However, he said, “conservatives, since the 1960s, have increasingly defined American society as a colorblind society, in the sense that maybe there were some problems in the past but American society corrected itself and now we have these laws and institutions that are meritocratic and anybody, regardless of race, can achieve the American dream.”

Confronted by the Black Lives Matter protests of last summer, as well as the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1619 curriculum, which roots American history in its racist past, Hartman said many Americans want simple answers.

“And so critical race theory becomes a stand-in for this larger anxiety about people being upset about persistent racism,” he said.

Legislative action

States such as Idaho and Oklahoma have adopted laws that limit how public school teachers can talk about race in the classroom, and Republican legislatures in nearly half a dozen states have advanced similar bills that target teachings that some educators say they don’t teach anyway.

There’s movement on the national level too.

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., has introduced the Combating Racist Training in the Military Act, a bill that would prohibit the armed forces and academics at the Defense Department from promoting “anti-American and racist theories,” which, according to the bill’s text, includes critical race theory.

Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., said he is co-sponsoring legislation that would prevent federal dollars from being spent on critical race theory in schools or government offices.

“The ideas behind critical race theory and [its] implementation is creating this oppressor-oppressed divide amongst our people,” Donalds told NPR. “And so no matter how you feel about the history of our country — as a Black man, I think our history has actually been quite awful, I mean, that’s without question — but you also have to take into account the progression of our country, especially over the last 60 to 70 years.”

Donalds said the country’s history, including its ills, should be taught, but that critical race theory causes more problems than solutions.

“It only causes more divisions, which doesn’t help our union become the more perfect union,” he said.

A post-racial country?

Nearly half of the speakers at the Republican news conference in May invoked Martin Luther King Jr., expressing their desire to be judged “by the content of their character, not the color of their skin.”

But Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, a sociology professor at Duke University, said King’s dream was about the future. “He didn’t say, ‘We are now in a colorblind society,’ ” he said.

Bonilla-Silva, whose book Racism Without Racists critiques the notion that America is now “colorblind,” says he too shares King’s dream, “but in order for us to get to the promised land of colorblindness, we have to go through race. It’s the opposite of what these folks are arguing.”

He says the idea that American society is post-racial is nonsense.

“We are not, because we watched the video of George Floyd, and we are not because we have the data on income inequality, on wealth inequality, on housing inequality,” he said.

As an example, Bonilla-Silva noted the opposition of whites to affirmative action in the post-civil rights era.

“Many whites said things such as, ‘I’m not a racist. I believe in equal opportunity, which is why I oppose affirmative action, because affirmative action is discrimination in reverse,’ ” he noted.

“That statement only works if one believes that discrimination has ended,” he added. “But because it has not ended, claiming that you oppose affirmative action because it’s presumably discrimination in reverse ends up justifying the racial status quo and the inequalities.”

Motivator for the midterms?

The fight over critical race theory will likely continue to be a heated issue ahead of next year’s midterm elections. Although November 2022 seems a long way away, Christine Matthews, president of Bellwether Research and a public opinion pollster, says pushback to anti-racism teaching is exactly the kind of issue that could maintain traction among certain voters.

“I think it’s just one more addition to the culture war that the Republicans really want to fight and it’s what they want to make the 2022 midterms about,” she said.

Matthews noted that Biden’s approval ratings, in the mid-50s, are significantly higher than Trump’s were throughout his term in office, “so Republicans are wanting to make this about othering the Democrats and making them seem as extreme and threatening to white culture as possible.”

“If Republicans can make [voters] feel threatened and their place in society threatened in terms of white culture and political correctness and cancel culture, that’s a visceral and emotional issue, and I do think it could impact turnout.”

These issues could be used to galvanize conservative voters and increase their numbers at the polls.

“We have seen evidence that the Republican base is responding much more to threats on cultural issues, even to some degree more than economic issues,” Matthews said.

But Rep. Donalds said the Republican Party doesn’t need to rally the base to get it to show up to vote.

“When it comes to the ’22 elections, we don’t need additional ammunition,” he said, pointing to what he views as a list of failures from the Biden administration, from budget and taxes to shutting down the Keystone pipeline.

Doug Heye, the former communications director for the Republican National Committee, said in some ways, the attempts to mandate what schools can or can’t teach highlights just how far the GOP under Trump has moved away from traditionally conservative principles — like wanting less federal involvement in schools.

“A lot of what we might have described as conservative policy five years ago, 10 years ago, now just isn’t that case,” he said. “If we’re pushing what is a current priority for the Trump base, that’s defined as conservative, whether or not that’s a federal top-down policy or not. So the old issues of federalism has really been upended under Donald Trump’s reign as the leader of the party.”

Heye said at this point, critical race theory is still politically a “niche issue” among conservative voters, but he expects it to play a larger role in state assemblies, governors races and school boards rather than in national politics.

He said he believes it’s an issue some candidates will raise “to further rile up the base that is already pretty riled.”

“So the question will be then for Republicans: What else are they really emphasizing?” he said.

From a strategy perspective, Matthews says she thinks it will all come down to messaging.

“The Republicans are trying to make it a bad thing,” she said, “but I feel like if the Democrats got the messaging right, they could make it a good thing.”

Both sides have a little more than a year to do that.

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Federal government launches loan program for Black-owned businesses

2021/06/02 Leave a comment

Useful initiative and will be interesting to see the results over the next few years:

The federal government is opening the doors to a loan program that will provide financing to Black-owned businesses that often face a steep hill to access capital.

The Black Entrepreneurship Loan Fund will provide loans of up to $250,000 for businesses that are majority Black-owned, or entrepreneurs for their startups or existing for-profit small businesses.

Social enterprises, partnerships and co-operative businesses are also eligible for the financing.

The government says applicants must have a business number, a business plan and financial statements, or project plans in the case of startups.

The Liberal government seeded the loan fund with $33.3 million, while the remainder of the $291.3 million program comes from a $130-million infusion from Business Development Bank of Canada, a Crown corporation, and $128 million split between the country’s biggest banks and two credit unions.

The Federation of African Canadian Economics will administer the loans, which will initially flow through BDC, and credit unions Alterna Savings and Vancity.

The latter two institutions will also take part in a pilot project in Ontario and British Columbia to provide microloans of between $10,000 and $25,000 to help those Black businesses that need some support to start or grow to address what the government calls a critical gap in the marketplace.

The launch of the loan program comes months after the Liberals first laid out the plan last September, and days after the one-year anniversary of the death of George Floyd at the hands of a white Minneapolis police officer, which sparked a worldwide reckoning with racial inequality.

In its wake, the Black parliamentary caucus, backed by multiple cabinet ministers, outlined a series of recommendations for the government to address, including financing aid.

“This is a meaningful historic step to correct a historic wrong: the systemic barriers in accessing financing faced by people of African descent,” Greg Fergus, chair of the Black parliamentary caucus, said in a statement.

“This loan fund partnership unlocks our extraordinary potential and creates economic prosperity for all Canadians.”

A recent survey of 342 Black entrepreneurs, commissioned by the African Canadian Senate Group, found three-quarters of respondents said their race makes it harder to succeed in business, with systemic racism, access to capital and the lack of a business network all cited as barriers to growth.

Source: Federal government launches loan program for Black-owned businesses

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New report details Beijing’s foreign influence operations in Canada

2021/06/02 Leave a comment

Of note:

China has set up a sophisticated network in this country to harass people of Chinese ethnicity and Uyghur- and Tibetan-Canadians, distort information in the media, influence politicians and form partnerships with universities to secure intellectual property, a new study says.

A report by Alliance Canada Hong Kong (ACHK) that was tabled on Monday evening at the special House of Commons committee on Canada-China relations warns that the influence operations by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) are widespread, but have gone largely unnoticed. Alliance Canada Hong Kong is an umbrella group for Hong Kong pro-democracy advocates in this country.

“In Canada, individuals and groups are targeted by [Chinese] party state actors and Chinese nationalists, both directly and indirectly,” said the report titled In Plain Sight: Beijing’s Unrestricted Network of Foreign Influence in Canada. “Chinese authorities co-ordinate intimidation operations and use families who are in PRC-controlled regions as bargaining chips.”

Cherie Wong, executive director of ACHK, said the human-rights group is trying to draw attention to Chinese Communist Party (CCP) surveillance and intimidation without fanning the flames of xenophobia.

The report details how the United Front Work Department – the agency responsible for co-ordinating Beijing’s overseas influence operations – guides and controls an elaborate network of proxies and front organizations to intimidate and co-opt Chinese-Canadians as well as politicians, academics and business leaders.

“The United Front has created and mobilized shell groups, registered [non-governmental organizations] and civil societies in Canada. These groups are designed to mimic legitimate community programs …while aggressively spreading pro-Beijing messages and party lines, whether in praising Hong Kong’s national security law or condemning dissent against the Beijing Olympics.”

Harassment and intimidation campaigns are organized by United Front-affiliated community groups, and misinformation is directed from WeChat and Chinese-language media against Uyghurs, Tibetans, Taiwanese, pro-democracy Hong Kongers and dissidents from mainland China, the report said.

“WeChat is among the top news sources for Chinese-Canadians, and social media apps may be the single most effective and concerning factor in the CCP’s arsenal over Canadian-Chinese language media, simply for the PRC’s direct ability to censor and monitor WeChat, Weibo, Youku, TikTok [Douyin] and other Chinese media entities.”

The report said Canadian universities and research institutions are especially vulnerable to foreign influence, citing Chinese-funded Confucius Institutes that spout Beijing propaganda, and partnerships with Canadian academics to obtain intellectual property.

“Various Canadian universities are known to collaborate with potentially compromising entities like the People’s Liberation Army,” the report said, noting that many academics don’t understand China’s efforts to blur the line between civilian and military research.

Alberta recently ordered its four major universities to suspend the pursuit of partnerships with people or organizations linked to Beijing or the Chinese Communist Party, citing concerns over national security and the risk the research could be used to facilitate human-rights abuses. The order came after The Globe and Mail reported on the University of Alberta’s extensive scientific collaboration with China that involves sharing and transferring research in strategically important areas such as nanotechnology, biotechnology and artificial intelligence.

The report by Ms. Wong’s group also warned about Chinese foreign influence operations that attempt to win over politicians and business leaders through all-expense-paid trips and lucrative investment projects. WeChat is often used to mobilize volunteers and donations for politicians who are sympathetic to Beijing’s interests, the report added.

“Though the majority of these operations are not considered criminal or direct threats to national security, these patterns of behaviour are inappropriate and should be disclosed to the public,” the report said.

Ms. Wong told the committee these influence operations will continue until the federal government takes the kind of actions to limit them that the United States and Australia have adopted, and stops worrying about angering Beijing.

She called for an Australian-style law that requires people and organizations acting on behalf of a foreign state to register as foreign agents. A government agency on foreign influence should be established with powers to investigate and enforce the law as well as initiate public inquiries and collect data on foreign influence.

Ms. Wong said Ottawa should also ban Canadian innovative research from being shared with the military and security apparatus of hostile states, such as China. Restrictions should also be placed on sharing Canadian data and private information that could be exploited by China.

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-new-report-details-beijings-foreign-influence-operations-in-canada/

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Statistics Canada: Profile of immigrants in nursing and health care support occupations

2021/05/31 Leave a comment

Another useful StatsCan study that provides a more detailed analysis of what we know from media articles and personal experiences in healthcare, along with the over-qualification in many cases due to regulatory and other barriers:

“This study uses data from the Census of Population and the Longitudinal Immigration Database to paint a picture of immigrants in nursing and health care support occupations. It also examines the representation of immigrants in nursing and health care support occupations by intended occupation upon admission to Canada and by admission category. Lastly, it examines the professional integration of immigrants who completed their nursing education both in and outside Canada.

·       Immigrants who arrived in Canada as adults (aged 18 or older) are overrepresented in nursing and health care support occupations. In 2015/2016, they made up 22% of the workforce in these occupations, compared with 16% of the total employed population.

·       This overrepresentation of adult immigrants was particularly high for those working in nurse aides, orderlies and patient service associates occupations (30%).

·       Overall, 5% of employed adult immigrants in 2015/2016 worked in nursing or health care support occupations, compared with 3% of other employed individuals. However, this proportion varied by place of birth. The percentage of adult immigrants in nursing or health care support occupations was particularly high among immigrants born in the Caribbean and Bermuda (13%), Western Africa (12%), Central Africa (12%), Eastern Africa (8%), and Southeast Asia (10%).

·       Among immigrants from Southeast Asia, immigrants from the Philippines stood out with a high proportion (13%) and a large number (44,380) of people employed in nursing or health care support occupations. In 2016, they accounted for nearly one-third (30%) of adult immigrants in these occupations.

·       Despite being overrepresented in these occupations, few principal applicants admitted under the economic immigration categories who were working as licensed practical nurses (2%) or nurse aides, orderlies or patient service associates (11%) had considered working in these occupations at the time they were admitted to Canada.

·       More than 4 in 10 (44%) adult immigrants in nursing and health care support occupations had completed their highest level of postsecondary education in Canada. However, this proportion varied by place of birth. For example, a large proportion of immigrants from the Caribbean and Bermuda (75%) and sub-Saharan Africa (60%) completed their highest level of education in Canada, while a minority of immigrants born in the Philippines (25%) and Southern Asia (32%) had done so.

·       Adult immigrants who graduated outside Canada had significantly higher rates of overqualification than adult immigrants who graduated in Canada. For example, immigrants who completed a bachelor’s degree or higher in a professional nursing program outside Canada were almost four times more likely to be overqualified (58%) than those who completed the same level of education in Canada (15%).”

Read or download the full report: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/75-006-x/2021001/article/00004-eng.htm

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State GOP lawmakers try to limit teaching about race, racism

2021/05/31 Leave a comment

Of note (and of course, the states are preserving existing indoctrination):

Teachers and professors in Idaho will be prevented from “indoctrinating” students on race. Oklahoma teachers will be prohibited from saying certain people are inherently racist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously. Tennessee schools will risk losing state aid if their lessons include particular concepts about race and racism.

Governors and legislatures in Republican-controlled states across the country are moving to define what race-related ideas can be taught in public schools and colleges, a reaction to the nation’s racial reckoning after last year’s police killing of George Floyd. The measures have been signed into law in at least three states and are being considered in many more.

Educators and education groups are concerned that the proposals will have a chilling effect in the classroom and that students could be given a whitewashed version of the nation’s history. Teachers are also worried about possible repercussions if a student or parent complains.

“Once we remove the option of teachers incorporating all parts of history, we’re basically silencing the voices of those who already feel oppressed,” said Lakeisha Patterson, a third-grade English and social studies teacher who lives in Houston and worries about a bill under consideration in Texas.

At least 16 states are considering or have signed into law bills that would limit the teaching of certain ideas linked to “critical race theory,” which seeks to reframe the narrative of American history. Its proponents argue that federal law has preserved the unequal treatment of people on the basis of race and that the country was founded on the theft of land and labor.

Those states include Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia.

The latest state to implement a law is Tennessee, where the governor this past week signed a bill to ban the teaching of critical race theory in schools.

The legislative debate over that bill caused a stir earlier this month when a Republican lawmaker who supports it, state Rep. Justin Lafferty, wrongly declared that the Constitution’s original provision designating a slave as three-fifths of a person was adopted for “the purpose of ending slavery.” Historians largely agree that the compromise gave slaveholding states more political power.

Some other states have taken steps that fall short of legislative change.

After Utah’s Republican governor blocked a vote on a set of similar bills, the GOP-controlled Legislature passed a symbolic resolution recommending that the state review any curriculum that examines the ways in which race and racism influence American politics, culture and the law.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp wrote in a letter to state education board members that they should “take immediate steps to ensure that Critical Race Theory and its dangerous ideology do not take root in our state standards or curriculum.”

Montana’s attorney general issued a binding decision Thursday declaring that certain teachings violate the U.S. and state constitutions and that schools, local governments and public workplaces could lose state funding and be on the hook for damages stemming from lawsuits if they provide critical race theory training or activities.

The National Education Association and the National Council for the Social Studies oppose legislation to limit what ideas can be presented inside a classroom.

“It creates a very chilling atmosphere of distrust, educators not being able to be the professionals they are not only hired to be but are trained to be,” said Lawrence Paska, a former middle school social studies teacher in New York and executive director of the council.

Republicans have said concepts suggesting that people are inherently racist or that America was founded on racial oppression are divisive and have no place in the classroom.

Earlier this month, Republicans in the North Carolina House moved to prohibit teachers from promoting seven concepts that critically examine race and racism, including the belief that a person’s race or sex determines their moral character, that people bear responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex, and that they should feel guilty because of those two characteristics.

Rep. John Torbett, a Republican who leads North Carolina’s House education committee, said the legislation was intended to promote equality, not rewrite history.

“It ensures equity,” Torbett said during a hearing this month. “It ensures that all people in society are equitable. It has no mention of history.”

Kimberlé Crenshaw, executive director of the African American Policy Forum, was among those who helped popularize critical race theory in the 1970s and 1980s as a response to what she and others felt was a lack of progress following passage of civil rights legislation in the 1960s.

She said Republicans are twisting the concept to inflame racial tensions and motivate their base of mostly white supporters.

“This is a 2022 strategy to weaponize white insecurity, to mobilize ideas that have been mobilized again and again throughout history, using a concept or set of ideas that they can convince people is the new boogeyman,” Crenshaw said.

The boundary between teaching ideas and promoting them has stirred concern among teachers and racial justice scholars.

Uncertainty about that boundary could cause teachers to avoid difficult conversations about American history, said Cheryl Harris, a UCLA Law School professor who teaches a course on critical race theory.

“For anybody who’s ever taught in a classroom, the idea is to get the conversation flowing, and you can’t do that if you’re preoccupied with which side of the line are you going to be on,” Harris said. “That is a chilling effect, and that is every bit as offensive to the First Amendment as a direct ban.”

Opponents of the North Carolina bill say it’s a solution in search of a problem. Tamika Walker Kelly, president of the North Carolina Association of Educators, said the bill’s promoters could not point to any school in the state where students were being indoctrinated in certain racial concepts.

That’s just one reason the bill faces an uphill climb. The press secretary for Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper said the governor believes instruction should be honest and accurate, and that students need to be taught to think critically.

The legislation also faces skepticism from the Republican leader of the state Senate, where it will be considered next.

“I don’t like making it illegal to teach a certain doctrine, as wrong as that doctrine may be, while saying the reason for that ban is freedom of thought,” Sen. Phil Berger said in a statement. “That strikes me as a contradiction.”

Source: State GOP lawmakers try to limit teaching about race, racism

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The term ‘BIPOC’ is a bad fit for the Canadian discourse on race

2021/05/31 1 Comment

Joseph Heath’s piece questioning the prevailing wisdom of Canadian diversity discourse and its reliance on American language and context struct a nerve and provoked a debate that earlier articles had not, including his defence of the term visible minorities rather than separating Blacks from other visible minority groups.

While I agree with his focus on Indigenous peoples and visible minorities, and use of those terms until the employment equity act terminology is changed. We also need to recognize the differences and the similarities with the USA, both overall and with respect to specific groups.

I am less convinced by his arguments of French as the other group, given constitutional guarantees and a provincial government with extensive powers (nationalist currents in Quebec might agree on the “oppression” aspect but would likely bristle at being lumped together with visible minorities):

One of the biggest problems in Canadian politics is that large segments of our population seem to think they live in the United States. How else can one explain the fools running around in MAGA hats and holding demonstrations in support of former U.S. president Donald Trump? Sometimes, I feel like I should shake them by the shoulders and shout, “You live in Canada!”

Unfortunately, I am beginning to feel the same way toward people who talk about “BIPOC issues,” as though it were normal for Canadians to use that expression. After all, BIPOC (“Black, Indigenous and People of Color”) is an acronym developed in the U.S. to discuss domestic race relations, just as BAME (“Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic”) is used in Britain.

Rather than developing our own acronym to reflect the reality of race relations and multiculturalism in Canada, far too many people have chosen just to use the American term. This cognitive capture by American social-justice discourse is, in many ways, just a left-wing version of what’s been happening with MAGA on the right.

All three components of the acronym, B, I and POC, are problematic in a Canadian context. Let’s start with “Black.” In the United States, there is good reason to put the B first, because Black people are by far the most important minority group in that country, making up more than 12 per cent of the population. Furthermore, as descendants of slavery, most can trace their ancestry in the U.S. back hundreds of years.

The situation in Canada is quite different. When I was born, in the 1960s, Black Canadians made up 0.2 per cent of the population. This number has grown to more than 3.5 per cent today, but the consequence is that the Black population in Canada consists almost entirely of immigrants and their immediate descendants. Furthermore, Black Canadians are not the largest group of recent immigrants, as they are outnumbered by both people of South Asian and East Asian ancestry.

Because of their distinctive history in the U.S., it makes sense to treat Black people as a separate category in that country. And because of their demographics, it may make some sense to put them before Indigenous people, who make up only 1.6 per cent of the U.S. population. In Canada, however, where Indigenous people make up almost 5 per cent of the population, it makes no sense at all to put the B before the I, or even to treat Black people as a separate category from other ethnic groups. Indeed, it is in many ways offensive to the distinctive status of Indigenous peoples in Canada to put the B first. From the perspective of many Indigenous people, the Black population of Canada are settlers, just like white Canadians – that is, part and parcel of the continuing colonial project.

As far as discrimination is concerned, comparative victimization claims are difficult to assess, but only someone who was confused about the differences between American and Canadian history could think that the suffering of Black Canadians outranks that of Indigenous peoples.

This brings us to the “POC” part of the acronym. This is slightly less important, but the term traditionally used in Canada is “visible minority.” And apart from being American, “person of colour” is not very popular among those it used to describe.

Finally, it is worth noting that the largest group of people in this country who were victimized by British colonialism, subjugated and incorporated into confederation by force, are French Canadians. This is why the status of the French language has served as the major flashpoint for conflict over minority rights in this country.

And so, if there is the need for an acronym to identify the most important minority groups in Canada, I would propose “FIVM”: Francophone, Indigenous and Visible Minority.

For all those who have enthusiastically adopted the BIPOC acronym – along with the American habit of analyzing social conflict through a racial lens – it is worth keeping in mind that the U.S. approach to race relations has been a recipe for conflict. Why anyone would want to import this way of thinking into Canada is a mystery to me. When people around the world look for models of pluralist integration to emulate, Canada’s federalism and multiculturalism policies are generally pointed to as among the most successful.

An important feature of these policies, traditionally, is that Canada has not sought to racialize what amount to ethnic differences among peoples. The idea that a recent immigrant from Ethiopia has something important in common with a descendant of African slaves whose ancestors have been on this continent for 300 years is not just a fiction – it is pernicious misrepresentation. Even the suggestion that all Black communities here face the same racism is likely to obscure more than it reveals.

The idea that we should continue with the failed American BIPOC model instead of using the far more appropriate FIVM acronym is difficult to understand – except as a consequence of American cultural imperialism. How else could anyone get the wild idea that it might advance the cause of social justice to import American racial politics?

Source: The term ‘BIPOC’ is a bad fit for the Canadian discourse on race

More neutral and less controversial question of the term BIPOC is seen in this piece by Azra Rashid:

On April 20, a jury in Minnesota found Derek Chauvin guilty of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in the killing of George Floyd. Following the verdict, Canadian media was filled with extensive coverage and endless analyses of the story.

Many Canadians watched the racism unfold in the United States with a sense of moral superiority and relief that “this kind of thing does not happen in Canada.” The Canadian response to racism south of the border can be described as an Americanization of Canadian history. The media’s lack of coverage of racism in Canada, in its historically accurate context, is a cause for concern.

Different histories of racism

Canada’s history of racism is different than the United States.

In 1619, the first slave ship docked on North American shores, bringing 20 enslaved Africans. This was the start of the transatlantic slave trade that saw at least 300,000 Africans brought to and sold at U.S. ports. Historians estimate that in Canada, between 1671 and 1834, there were 4,200 slaves – about two-thirds were Indigenous and one-third were Black.

Outlawing the slave trade and restrictions on non-European immigration later slowed down the growth of the Black population both in the U.S. and in Canada.

Immigration regulations introduced in 1962 in Canada eliminated preferences for immigrants of European origin for a points-based system, prioritizing skilled labour. As a result, the immigrant population became more diverse in Canada. Similarly, in the U.S., the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, the Refugee Act of 1980 and the Immigration Act of 1990 have helped to increase the number of immigrants in the country.

Immigrants today account for 13.7 per cent of the U.S. population compared to 22 per cent in Canada.

The history of slavery and immigration provides an important context to contemporary conversations on racism. But an increase in immigration does not automatically lead to more or less racism.

In a country like Canada, it’s important for us to acknowledge our differences in history from the U.S., account for racism within a particular historical context and reflect on what racism actually looks like here.

Difference can provide a space for understanding the implication of race in defining the various experiences of racialized groups, instead of a universalized representation of race and racism.

Racism towards Indigenous people

Canada has a long history of racism towards Indigenous people – from the colonization of their land and enslavement to the violation of treaties and policies that led to residential schools and the ‘60s Scoop.

Abuse and racism suffered by First Nations, Inuit and Métis people at the hands of the government continue to take a toll on Indigenous lives. Many remote communities face challenges accessing basic necessities like clean drinking water.

Indigenous people in Canada also experience the highest levels of poverty: 25 per cent of Indigenous people live in poverty while 40 per cent of Indigenous children live in poverty.

Accessing health care has also been a challenge for many First Nations people. Several months ago, Joyce Echaquan died in a hospital in Joliette, Que. Not only did she not receive the help she needed, but hospital staff told her that she would be better off dead. Meaningful action to fight the systemic racism Indigenous people are experiencing is yet to come.

In the U.S., genocidal policies aimed at Indigenous people changed when legislators passed a number of laws, most importantly the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975, which resulted in the U.S. government’s recognition of Indigenous statehood.

In recent years, some policies, especially those implemented by former president Donald Trump’s administration, have been diminishing tribal land rights, sovereignty and resources. The Keystone XL Pipeline project, approved by the Trump administration and cancelled by U.S. President Joe Biden, was met with strong resistance from Indigenous people in Canada and the U.S. The project had the backing of Canadian government.

The American influence

The U.S. influences Canadian lives in many ways – from the economy to culture. Canadians often mindlessly consume U.S. media and politics without thinking twice about how those issues manifest themselves in Canada and what the differences are in the history of race and racism between the two countries.

The Americanization of Canadian culture is not new. In 1926, in an essay titled Is Canada Being Americanized?, journalist and philosopher C.H. Bretherton offered reflections on Canada’s movement toward American models of social and economic life. However, Americanization of Canadian history is a rather new phenomenon.

About a decade ago, a national survey of 18- to 24-year-olds found that only 46 per cent of respondents knew Sir John A. Macdonald was the first prime minister of Canada, let alone the racist policies he implemented in the country. Polls conducted more recently by Historica Canada show a similar lack of knowledge of Canada’s history.

The blame falls not only on our education system, but also on our news and media that continue to lead with American stories and fail to report on what is historically important and relevant in Canada. In the last 100 years, immigration reforms have made Canada more diverse, but the systemic racism faced by Indigenous peoples and immigrants fails to make a mark on the Canadian conscience.

The same day a jury reached a verdict in the Chauvin trial, a superior court in Québec decided to uphold Bill 21. The law prohibits public sector workers who are in positions of authority (including teachers, police officers and judges) from wearing religious symbols (such as hijabs, niqabs, kippas, yarmulkes, crucifixes or turbans) at work. The judge made an exception for individuals working in English-language schools. That story, however, was buried under the coverage of the Chauvin verdict.

While news outlets are flooded with stories on anti-Black racism, many stemming from the other side of the border, there’s still no uproar in Canada about legitimizing racism by targeting non-white communities.

Source: Racism & the Americanization of Canadian history: Why we shouldn’t look at ourselves through a U.S. lens

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How Religion, Education, Race And Media Consumption Shape Conspiracy Theory Beliefs

2021/05/29 Leave a comment

Of note:

Religion, education, race and media consumption are strong predictors of conspiracy theory acceptance among Americans, according to a new survey from the Public Religion Research Institute.

The survey of 5,149 adults living across the United States released on Thursday finds a strong correlation between consuming right-wing media sources and accepting conspiracy theories such as QAnon.

The poll examines ties between religious beliefs and belief in false conspiracy theories. White evangelicals and Hispanic Protestants were the most susceptible to the QAnon theory. 

About 1 in 4 respondents from those religious groups said they believed that “the government, media, and financial worlds in the U.S. are controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation,” a statement associated with the false QAnon conspiracy theory. 

That’s notably higher than the 15% of Black Protestants, as well as 15% of Americans overall, who agreed with that statement. At 8%, Jewish Americans were the religious group least likely to say they agree.

The report also looks at education and media consumption. Americans who said they consume far-right news sources reported the highest rates of conspiracy theory acceptance; close to half said they believe in the tenets of QAnon. The survey defined outlets such as Newsmax and One America News Network, or OANN, as “far-right.”

Source: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjXmNvkpuzwAhXMWM0KHUiiBaEQxfQBMA96BAgVEAM&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.npr.org%2F2021%2F05%2F27%2F1000865185%2Fhow-religion-education-race-and-media-consumption-shape-conspiracy-theory-belief&usg=AOvVaw2fhbiM630IQeArZMOpHr4W

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Germany recognizes colonial killings in Namibia as genocide

2021/05/29 Leave a comment

Of note:

Germany has reached an agreement with Namibia that will see it officially recognize as genocide the colonial-era killings of tens of thousands of people and commit to spending a total of 1.1 billion euros ($1.3 billion), largely on development projects.

The accord announced Friday is the result of more than five years of talks with Namibia on the events of 1904-1908, when Germany was the southern African country’s colonial ruler.

Historians say German Gen. Lothar von Trotha, who was sent to what was then German South West Africa to put down an uprising by the Herero people in 1904, instructed his troops to wipe out the entire tribe. They say that about 65,000 Herero were killed and at least 10,000 Nama.

“In the light of Germany’s historical and moral responsibility, we will ask Namibia and the descendants of the victims for forgiveness,” German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said in a statement.

“Our aim was and is to find a joint path to genuine reconciliation in remembrance of the victims,” he said. “That includes our naming the events of the German colonial era in today’s Namibia, and particularly the atrocities between 1904 and 1908, unsparingly and without euphemisms.”

“We will now officially call these events what they were from today’s perspective: a genocide.”

Talks between Germany and Namibia opened in 2015, more than a decade after a 2004 visit to Namibia in which then-Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul offered Germany’s first apology for the killings, which she said were “what today would be labeled as genocide.”

Maas said that, “as a gesture of recognition of the incalculable suffering,” Germany plans to support Namibia and the descendants of the victims with a 1.1 billion-euro “rebuilding and development” program in whose design and implementation “the communities affected by the genocide will take a decisive role.”

At the same time, he said that “legal claims to compensation cannot be derived from this.”

That reflects Germany’s position that the Genocide Convention of 1948 can’t be applied retroactively, and that its liability is political and moral rather than legal.

The projects Germany will now fund are expected to stretch over a 30-year period and will cover areas such as land reform, including land purchases, agriculture, rural infrastructure, water supply and vocational training. They will be separate from continuing development aid to Namibia.

Germany says that representatives of the Herero and Nama were involved in the negotiations, though Berlin’s direct dealings have been with the Namibian government.

Germany gained control of the desert country in the 1880s and surrendered the territory to South Africa in 1915. Namibia gained independence in 1990.

Source: Germany recognizes colonial killings in Namibia as genocide

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Government’s failure to keep stock of PPE reserves hurt us when we needed it most

2021/05/29 Leave a comment

Good commentary on the long history of government data management and use issues, brought to prominence during COVID-19, along with systemic accountability issues.

And yes, the default option for government data would be public (and to be fair, the open government initiative has resulted in more availability of data):

Seventeen years ago, there was a cabinet minister named Reg Alcock, the President of the Treasury Board, who invited people to his office for lectures about data.

The late Mr. Alcock was a hefty, 6-foot-8 mountain of a man with two main interests: Liberal Party organizing in Manitoba and dragging the government into the digital age. Part of the lecture he gave in 2004 was a question: Why is it that corporate executives have computers that can tell them, for example, how many trucks their company owns, but a prime minister would need a year to get the same answer from government?

On Wednesday, Auditor-General Karen Hogan issued a report on the government’s handling of stockpiles of PPE that let it be known that Mr. Alcock’s question is still hanging in the air, nearly two decades later.

Ms. Hogan’s team reported that the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) had a stockpile of personal protective equipment and medical devices, but it didn’t have a policy about what should be in it, or what was in it, or whether the equipment had expired.

When the biggest public-health crisis of modern times hit and provinces needed N95 masks and ventilators from the National Emergency Strategic Stockpile, well, there wasn’t enough useful stuff there. The data were so unreliable the auditors couldn’t tell how badly it fell short.

The haphazard management of the stockpile wasn’t a new thing. Internal audits in 2010 and 2013 raised those issues.

Citizens might think a decade of disregarded warnings is a scandal that will shake the halls of power in Ottawa. But for a politician, it is cause for relief. The best kind of failure is one that was going on long before you took office. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s advisers will be happy enough that the Auditor-General credited the government for responding after the crisis hit.

But note that PHAC did draft a proposal to develop a better inventory management system in January, 2020 – just as COVID-19 was spreading – but agency officials told auditors “it was put on hold because of budget constraints.”

Mr. Alcock, back in the day, didn’t just want government to get computer systems – they have a lot – but to manage data, to make more information available and usable, so that government knows better what is happening within government.

But politicians in charge aren’t good at driving change in long-term, systemic issues that voters don’t even see. Mr. Alcock, for example, was preaching for IT in a Paul Martin government busy with Liberal scandals and non-confidence votes in Parliament.

Two PMs later, and governments still have a hard time seeing what government is doing. The National Emergency Strategic Stockpile wasn’t much use in a crisis because it didn’t do the kind of information management that that happens at a grocery store: figuring out what you will need, buying it, tracking what goes in and out and what is going bad.

By now we know that bad data management, not knowing what you don’t know, raises risk in a crisis. And there’s something else: Most of that data can and should be made public.

Why not let the public see the running tally of N95 masks in inventory, or ventilators on the web? Most people won’t look at it, but perhaps a few experts in universities and elsewhere will analyze the policies, crunch the data and, we can hope, point out when they’re messed up. Or just missing. That applies to other kinds of data, too.

In Britain, this week’s remarkable testimony of Dominic Cummings, a former aide to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, about the chaotic initial response to the pandemic made it pretty clear that it’s no longer necessary, or wise, to leave the data inside government.

Mr. Cummings testified to a parliamentary committee that false assumptions, bad analysis, and groupthink inside government led Mr. Johnson’s government to a disastrous notion that it should try to reach herd immunity rather than slowing the spread of COVID-19. Scientists outside government, notably a mathematician, helped convince him that was “catastrophically wrong,” he said. He and the government’s top science adviser later agreed data should have been released earlier, to get input.

That’s not the same thing as PHAC’s failure to keep track of a stockpile. But then, if we want to encourage the government to keep tabs on the data, one good way is to demand to see it.

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-governments-failure-to-keep-stock-of-ppe-reserves-hurt-us-when-we/

Filed under Government, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , ,

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